Last week I read the following article in the Chronicle about the Netflix documentary Last Chance U.

The current season details the story of Oakland’s Laney College football team’s 2019 season led by its almost larger than life coach John Beam.

It is alternately riveting, inspirational and at times a sad and depressing story of young American athletes coping with 21st century life. Last Chance U is both a sports documentary and a socialogical study.

Everyone should watch it.

Excerpted from San Francisco Chronicle 8.7.2020

Over the past week, while juggling numerous media obligations, Laney College football coach John Beam learned that the Wi-Fi at his Oakland house wasn’t strong enough to accommodate his new needs as well as those of his therapist wife Cindi.

“We’re getting a new internet provider this weekend,” said Beam, whose recent star turn on the fifth season of Netflix’s “Last Chance U” — a documentary series about the grind of junior college football — has vaulted him from local legend to a national story. “Our current Wi-Fi just hasn’t had the bandwidth for everything we need right now.”

Last year, when Beam agreed to give a 30-person film crew access behind the scenes, he knew the show would bring attention to a commuter school in downtown Oakland that doesn’t offer student-athletes scholarships or even on-campus housing. What Beam hadn’t foreseen was the scope of Netflix’s audience.

Within the first week of Season 5’s release, Laney’s athletics site boasted more than 250,000 visitors spanning nearly 30 countries. Hundreds of aspiring college football players contacted the school, asking for a chance with the Eagles. Given that Laney doesn’t have a sports information director, Beam has relied on assistant Sakai Metcalf and Netflix’s PR team to sift through dozens of media requests.

After accompanying Cindi on a walk each morning, Beam, Laney’s athletic director since 2006, does nearly a half-dozen phone interviews. The rest of his day is spent replying to fan emails; reminding prospective recruits that joining the Eagles means paying exorbitant Bay Area rents; mapping out the school’s contingency plans for the coronavirus pandemic; and preparing for a football season that has been pushed back to spring.

“The interest we’ve gotten lately has been overwhelming,” said Beam, who has helped more than 100 players land Division I scholarships — including 20-plus who reached the NFL — during his 40 years coaching in Oakland. “But at the end of the day, it’s nice to know people are seeing we are a great avenue. We can help you transition to the next part of your life.”

Junior college football is ripe for compelling storytelling. At each of the three schools it has followed, “Last Chance U” painted portraits of disadvantaged teenagers who saw a Division I scholarship as a shot at the NFL and ultimately a better life for their families. Coaches had to balance a desire to win with the need to get impressive game film for their sophomores.

But compared to many of the challenges players and coaches navigated in the first four seasons, the obstacles at Laney are particularly daunting. Folks at East Mississippi Community College in Scooba, Miss., (Seasons 1 and 2) and Independence Community College in Independence, Kan., (Seasons 3 and 4) at least didn’t worry about going hungry or finding a place to sleep.

At Laney, student-athletes often commute from their parents’ homes throughout the Bay Area and work part-time jobs to afford tuition. The struggles some team members face are so immense that the cash-strapped school hired social worker Carlisa Harris last year to help players apply for food stamps, find low-income housing near campus and set up therapy to deal with childhood traumas.

Season 5’s most memorable scenes came away from the field, where camera crews offered viewers intimate looks at the lengths student-athletes went to keep long-shot NFL dreams alive.

https://www.sfchronicle.com/sports/article/Last-Chance-U-How-Laney-College-is-15464930.php#photo-19725388

Every Picture Tells a Story – Ongoing Series

Photo above taken on the bluffs above Ocean Beach in San Francisco at 5:30PM Saturday afernoon as the temperature was in the 80° plus range.

Photo below is a group in close quarters in Sutro Heights Park, none of whom are wearing face protection.

No wonder over 172,000 Americans have perished during the Pandemic.

Photos – Lee Heidhues

Artwork – Liz Heidhues

Anything is possible with Trump who is becoming to behave like a wild beast soon to be collared and tossed into quarantine.

The guy will go down and take us with him into the deep hole of Dystopia.

Excerpted from The Nation -reprinted from http://www.tomdispatch.com 8.13.2020

The administration’s escalating aggression toward Iran could be leading to a full-blown war ahead of the November election.

Was Donald Trump’s January 3 drone assassination of Maj. Gen. Qasem Soleimani the first step in turning the simmering cold war between the United States and Iran into a hot war in the weeks before an American presidential election?

Consider it beyond irony if, this October, the latest election “surprise” were to take us back to the very origins of the term in the form of some kind of armed conflict that could only end terribly for everyone involved. It’s a formula for disaster and like so many other things, when it comes to Donald J. Trump, it can’t be ruled out.

Of course, there’s no way to know, but behind by double digits in most national polls and flanked by ultra-hawkish Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, Trump is a notoriously impetuous and erratic figure. In recent weeks, for instance, he didn’t hesitate to dispatch federal paramilitary forces to American cities run by Democratic mayors and his administration also seems to have launched a series of covert actions against Tehran that look increasingly overt and have Iran watchers concerned about whether an October surprise could be in the cards.

Much of that concern arises from the fact that, across Iran, things have been blowing up or catching fire in ways that have seemed both mysterious and threatening. Early last month, for instance, a suspicious explosion at an Iranian nuclear research facility at Natanz, which is also the site of its centrifuge production, briefly grabbed the headlines. Whether the site was severely damaged by a bomb smuggled into the building or some kind of airstrike remains unknown.

“A Middle Eastern intelligence official said Israel planted a bomb in a building where advanced centrifuges were being developed,” reported The New York Times. Similar fiery events have been plaguing the country for weeks. On June 26, for instance, there was “a huge explosion in the area of a major Iranian military and weapons development base east of Tehran.” On July 15, seven ships caught fire at an Iranian shipyard. Other mysterious fires and explosions have hit industrial facilities, a power plant, a missile production factory, a medical complex, a petrochemical plant, and other sites as well.

“Some officials say that a joint American-Israeli strategy is evolving—some might argue regressing—to a series of short-of-war clandestine strikes,” concluded another report in the Times.

Some of this sabotage has been conducted against the backdrop of a two-year-old “very aggressive” CIA action plan to engage in offensive cyber attacks against that country. As a Yahoo! News investigative report put it: “The Central Intelligence Agency has conducted a series of covert cyber operations against Iran and other targets since winning a secret victory in 2018 when President Trump signed what amounts to a sweeping authorization for such activities, according to former US officials with direct knowledge of the matter… The finding has made it easier for the CIA to damage adversaries’ critical infrastructure, such as petrochemical plants.”

Meanwhile, on July 23, two US fighter jets buzzed an Iranian civilian airliner in Syrian airspace, causing its pilot to swerve and drop altitude suddenly, injuring a number of the plane’s passengers.

For many in Iran, the drone assassination of Soleimani—and the campaign of sabotage that followed—has amounted to a virtual declaration of war. The equivalent to the Iranian major general’s presidentially ordered murder, according to some analysts, would have been Iran assassinating Secretary of State Pompeo or Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mark Milley, although such analogies actually understate Soleimani’s stature in the Iranian firmament.

In its aftermath, Iran largely held its fire, its only response being a limited, telegraphed strike at a pair of American military bases in Iraq. If Soleimani’s murder was intended to draw Iran into a tit-for-tat military escalation in an election year, it failed. So perhaps the United States and Israel designed the drumbeat of attacks against critical Iranian targets this summer as escalating provocations meant to goad Iran into retaliating in ways that might provide an excuse for a far larger US response.

Over the past four decades, “October surprise” has evolved into a catch-all phrase meaning any unexpected action by a presidential campaign just before an election designed to give one of the candidates a surprise advantage. Ironically, its origins lay in Iran. In 1980, during the contest between President Jimmy Carter and former California governor Ronald Reagan, rumors surfaced that Carter might stage a raid to rescue scores of American diplomats then held captive in Tehran. (He didn’t.)

https://www.thenation.com/article/world/trump-war-iran/

The German government continues to remind its citizens of the horror inflicted upon the country and the world by the Nazi regime.

This has been the policy since the collapse of the Hitler tyranny in 1945.

It is all the more crucial that these remembrances feature prominently in German life, particularly as the scourge of neo-Nazism continues to rear its perverse and ugly head 75 years after the collapse of Hitler’s genocidal rule.

Deutsche Welle 8.12.2020

The Nazi Party executed student Sophie Scholl in 1943 for her role in the White Rose resistance group. The German government is set to release a special coin next year, marking her 100th birthday.

Anti-National Socialism political activist and student Sophie Scholl will be commemorated on a special coin, said the German Finance Ministry on Wednesday.

The €20 ($23) sterling silver collectors coin will be issued in April 2021, timed to coincide with Scholl’s birthday.

Scholl was a member of the non-violent Nazi-resistance White Rose group. She was convicted of treason for distributing anti-war pamphlets along with her brother Hans and executed on February 22, 1943, by guillotine. She was 21 years old when she was killed.

Photo – Lee Heidhues.  Topography of Terror – Berlin 

Her resistance has become “an example for the fight against lack of freedom and oppression,” said Germany’s Finance Ministry, announcing the decision in Berlin.

The coin has been designed by Saxony-based artist Olaf Stoy. A portrait of Scholl’s face will be on one side of the coin.

“A feeling for what is just and unjust” – a quote from Sophie Scholl – will be written on the edge of the coin.

Who was Sophie Scholl?

Sophia Magdalena Scholl was born in Forchtenberg, Germany in 1921. She studied biology and philosophy at Munich University, where her brother was studying medicine and where he had formed the White Rose organization. Sophie later found out about the secretive group and joined.

The pacifist group campaigned against the Nazis, writing leaflets using political and biblical arguments to persuade people to resist the National Socialist ideology.

On February 18, 1943, Sophie and Hans were arrested after distributing a sixth anti-Nazi flyer at the university and killed days later.

Read more: Albert Speer and the myth of ‘the good Nazi’

Remembering White Rose members

It’s not the first time that Germany has honored members of the well-known resistance group.

At the end of last year, Germany’s military renamed the Hochbrück army complex the Christoph Probst barracks after the medical student and White Rose activist.

In 2012, the main lecture hall at the Bundeswehr’s medical academy in Munich was named after Sophie’s brother, Hans Scholl.

https://www.dw.com/en/germany-to-honor-anti-nazi-hero-sophie-scholl-with-coin/a-54541239

The 8.11.2020 WSJ editorial hi-lights or low-lights depending on your perspective.

Mr. Biden’s choice is especially important because he would be the oldest President on Inauguration Day at age 78. The actuarial tables and his declining mental acuity suggest he wouldn’t run for re-election, assuming he lasts a full term.

She’s a political lifer who rose through the patronage machine of former Assembly Speaker Willie Brown.

Ms. Harris ran for President this year but washed out quickly despite being a media favorite as the candidate from central casting.

She’s progressive but malleable.

The Sanders wing pressed for a progressive, and Ms. Harris is a safer choice by far than Elizabeth Warren.

The entire editorial can be found by opening the link.

WSJ Editorial – Kamala Harris VP 8.11.2020

San Francisco, again. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. Senator Dianne Feinstein. Governor Gavin Newsom.

Now the former San Francisco District Attorney, California Attorney General and currently Senator Kamala Harris is the VP in waiting.

Excerpted from Buzz Feed News – 8.11.2020

The California senator, who ran for president herself this year, will be the first Black woman on a major party presidential ticket.

There may be a new day dawning for Justice.

The days of cops literally getting away with murder are at long last being scrutinized by the courts.

A man murdered by cops eight years ago in Compton, CA is no longer with us. At least his family has received some Justice.

The California Supreme Court has put down an emphatic marker to these rogue cops.  Cops must behave like decent humans or pay the price.

San Francisco Chronicle – Bob Egelko – 8.10.2020

The family of a man who died after a sheriff’s deputy knelt on his back and neck is entitled to a full damage award from the county that employed the officer, even though the man was found partly responsible for his own death, the California Supreme Court ruled Monday.

Olu Orange, a lawyer for three of Darren Burley’s children, said the ruling “restores one of the most powerful tools Black and brown Californians have in pursuing justice against police officers who kill people they are sworn to protect.”

“California principles of comparative fault have never required or authorized the reduction of an intentional tortfeasor’s liability based on the acts of others,” Justice Ming Chin said in the unanimous ruling, using the legal term for wrongdoer.

In a separate opinion, Justice Goodwin Liu compared the African American man in this case, Darren Burley, to another Black man, George Floyd, killed by a Minneapolis policeman who knelt on his neck in May. That officer, Derek Chauvin, has been charged with murder, and three other officers are charged with aiding him. No officers have been charged with crimes in Burley’s death.

“Variants of this fact pattern have occurred with distressing frequency throughout the country and here in California,” said Liu, joined by Justice Mariano-Florentino Cuéllar.

Every picture tells a story – ongoing series.

A muggy Saturday afternoon in San Francisco by the Pacific Ocean.

Folks crowd the near by Ocean Beach, casually ignore Shelter in Place and the fact 5,000,000 Americans have now tested positive for COVID-19.

Going down blissfully is one way to cope with the Pandemic  as the seabirds fly by.

Photos – Lee Heidhues

Liz Heidhues 8.8.2020

I will never shop at Ace Hardware, 152 Clement Street, San Francisco  AGAIN! 

I have been shopping there for years.  On August 7, I had to listen to an elderly Chinese customer being abused by a young male employee.  The employee kept shouting “GET THE F*** OUT OF MY STORE!” while physically confronting the somewhat confused elderly shopper.

The shopper’s mask had slipped from his face down around his neck.  I heard the expletive-laced language two aisles away.  I watched as I stood in line to pay.  Finally, I spoke up and told the employee that I objected to listening to the F*** word over and over while I was shopping.

Then a very tall male employee came rushing over to chew me out for objecting to watching a fellow shopper being mistreated.  BOTH male employees ganged up on me and told me I could shop somewhere else.  They told me that they could say whatever they wanted to customers because their Ace Hardware was private property.

They told me to shop with my feet and leave.  They said “WE DON’T WANNA GET COVID-19! WE DON’T SELL VENTILATORS HERE!!”

I perceived their verbal abuse of this Chinese man shopping in their store related to the American people calling COVID-19 the “Chinese virus.”  I am elderly, too.  I was shaken by the hostility shown by the Ace Hardware staff toward a Chinese shopper.

We all need a break from depressing news of the Pandemic, the American government’s failure to provide needed financial help for its citizens and the other crises afflicting planet earth in 2020 on a daily basis.

Deutsche Welle 8.7.2020

A nude sunbather was filmed chasing after a wild boar who stole his laptop, while he was relaxing at a Berlin lake. In a video that has now gone viral, the man was seen running after the boar at the Teufelssee, a popular spot for nude sunbathing.

Adele Landauer, a Berlin-based life coach who took the photos, shared them on her Instagram account on Friday.

“Yesterday at the lake in Berlin I saw a real hero,” she wrote. “A female wild boar with two babies came out of the forest in order to search for food … In Berlin we are free people — we love to bathe in the sun and lake like we are born.”

East Berlin – 1986

“Many of us were scared but the wild boars seemed to be peaceful,” she added, going on to describe the man’s ordeal when the boars “found this yellow bag and decided to take it away.”

The owner of the bag immediately jumped up to chase the boars, as his laptop was inside. “Every one of us adored him, how focused he stayed, and when he came back with his yellow bag in hand we all clapped and congratulated him for his success,” Landauer wrote. “This happens when you’re focused on your goals.”

“This must be the best thing on the internet today,” one Twitter user wrote.

“I was just sent the most joyful picture of all time,” another user tweeted.

Meanwhile, Landauer also uploaded the photos on her Facebook page in a post which was shared over 13,000 times by Friday afternoon. Landauer said that she had obtained permission from the man to post the photos, and that he laughed out loud when she showed them to him. 

“If people bring food to the lake, the animals can smell it from as far as 1,000 meters away,” said Derk Ehlert of the Berlin Senate Department for the Environment. The wild boars are probably used to eating food in plastic bags, said Ehlert.

Because many people leave their leftovers behind, boars, along with foxes, raccoons and badgers often come to forage in the evenings. In summer, he added, such encounters with animals before nightfall are not unlikely, as more people frequent the lakes during periods of warmer weather.

The Berlin official added just one request to dwellers of the German capital: “Please don’t leave your garbage or food by the water or forest.”

https://www.dw.com/en/nude-berlin-sunbather-filmed-chasing-after-laptop-thieving-wild-boar/a-54492083